Educating Esme: Trauma, Travail, and Treasures from the
Trenches
Thomas Cloer, Jr.
The book, Educating Esme (1999), a diary of Esme Codell, a fifth grade
beginning teacher in Chicago, gives us pause by stating well some of the major problems
teachers face today. Esme was an independent 24 year old woman with great enthusiasm,
but with disdain for the bureaucratic politics of public education. Her diary is uncensored,
and it captures marvelously well the gut feelings and the screams of so many of us when
we encountered the inevitable travails of public school teachers. These travails included
Esme's problems with her principal, the failure of her curricula materials, and the lack of
veritable imagination by some of her veteran colleagues. The book, however, also has
great potential for literacy teachers because of the language arts instructional treasures
Esme digs from the Chicago trenches.
Analyzing Esme's Trauma and Travail
One of the first things Esme notes in her diary is the incompetence of the
principal, Mr. Turner. This man's incompetence ran the gamut from sins of omission to
sins of comission. The worst sin of omission was the thing that cut Esme the most, Mr.
Turner's inability to say "Thank you" (Codell, p. 12). His sins of commission are frequent
and pathetic. One that is basic to all others resounds in Mr. T's question, "What do I
think?" The man actually is reported to have asked that in order to retrieve some verbiage
from Esme that he could use at faculty meeting, and thereby sound creditable. This lends
credence to Locke's concept of the mind as a tabula rasa, an unformed, featureless blank
slate. Poor Mr. Turner didn't have a clue.
What is the best way for a good literacy teacher to perform under such conditions?
When the educational chiropractor came to align the curriculum, Esme asked the
quintessential question that many of us asked as literacy teachers when we found
ourselves in similarly appalling situations.
Can't we just look at the scope and sequence they print in front of
all the textbooks and use all the right verbiage? What bureaucrat would be
the wiser? Once we close the classroom door, who else but us know what
goes on? (p. 138)
I really believe Esme had it right when she said these prefabricated curriculum
mandates usually work two ways. They make really gifted and creative teachers prove
they are gifted and creative or they serve as scripts for those who need them. "At worse,
mediocrity. At best, miracles.” (p. 139). I really hope she is wrong in her belief that
there may be a conspiracy in our educational system to have all teachers and all children
to be alike. Remember Bill Clinton's well-intentioned but lame and misguided attempt to
have every child ready for school (instead of every school ready for children)?
As I read this diary, I was amazed at how attitudes at this inner city Chicago school
were like attitudes at Shady School in Fetterman's (1967) Stinking Creek. I was
particularly interested in Fetterman's book because I had worked in this mountainous
section of Appalachia during my second sabbatical. Fetterman related how the children of
Stinking Creek, Kentucky were beautiful and how their faces reflected the round, fair
features of their English, Scottish, and Irish ancestors. Fetterman compared their physical
beauty to their intellectual world and concluded that the latter was simply shabby. One of
the school administrators that served Stinking Creek reminded one of Mr. Turner. "I don't
know whether we can ever do anything for those people up the hollows” (Fetterman,
1967). Fetterman concludes that whether anything could or could not be done, no one had
really ever tried to do anything significant. I got the feeling while reading Esme's diary
that a similar situation occurred in this inner city Chicago school. One of the mantras I
hear regularly is how ill-prepared, incapable, and unwilling the students are. Esme referred
to it when she was depressed after writing a proposal for a school-wide Fairy Tale
Festival. "It doesn't occur to them that they might help or get enthused or at least have the
courtesy to get out of your way" (p. 7). Why is it that so many educators argue and
complain that the wrong children were sent to their school? When will the clientele be
accepted without question, respected, and invited to join in the progress of civilization?
Also, as I read Esme's diary, I wanted to say, alternately, "Right on!" or "Get over
it already!” Those of us purporting to be literacy educators can say "Right on!” to most of
Esme's language arts instruction for her broad range of fifth graders. I wanted to tell Esme
to "Get over it already!" when she wrestled and fought interminably with Mr. Turner
about allowing the students to call her Madame Esme instead of Ms. Esme or Ms. Codell.
But then I'm reminded that this is her first year – her first year. By now, Esme has learned
that Ms. Federman, a colleague who talked Esme out of quitting after yet another brawl
over the Madame monicker, was absolutely right. Esme had never seen a real fight.
Furthermore, by now Esme has learned, after winning the Dr. Peggy Williams Award
from the Chicago Chapter of the International Reading Association for outstanding new
teacher in the field of reading and language arts, that Ms. Federman isn't the only teacher
to have taken "more shit than fits in all the septic systems in Chicago" (p. 111). Esme too
has persevered; she alas now works within the system. The most beneficial reading in this
book for me, a literacy educator, was Esme's language arts methodology. Her language
arts classes are really worth analyzing.
Replicating Esme: Treasures from the Trenches
As I read this book, I specifically focused on Esme's literacy instructional
activities. Esme, as a literacy teacher, knew how urgent it was to use authentic text.
Throughout the book, I was taken aback by how well she integrated her listening,
speaking, reading and writing, and grounded them in a meaning-based curriculum. Her
very first lesson had children write on little books resembling windows. They wrote about
how they felt as to where they came from, and their feelings about coming to their school.
After these writings were hung on a big cut-out of a school, one could "open windows"
and read. If the basal companies haven't approached Esme yet, they soon will, and we will
soon know if those "balls of steel" (p. 114) are malleable.
Esme must have read some of the literature relating directly to fifth graders
working with kindergarten and how fantastic cognitive and affective gains resulted
(Coleman, 1990; Labbo & Teale, 1990). Cross-age tutoring has fifth graders learning
kindergarten skills in order to teach them. Esme used music, much rehearsing (remember
repeated readings?), visual displays, and had fifth graders reading meaningful connected
text to others in meaningful ways.
Esme cared about the attitudes of her students. She acted caringly. Children
unburdened their home worries in her Trouble Basket so they could focus on school.
What a marvelous way to integrate language arts and do it caringly! Esme used AstonWarner's (1963) organic vocabulary approach, an approach used and promoted by Veatch
(1985). This approach for mastering vocabulary has students choose a meaningful word
in their listening and speaking vocabularies, and the teacher helps the students put the
words in their reading and writing vocabularies. Esme knew about instruction. She knew
how critical it was. I suspected it from the get-go. But my suspicions were confirmed
when I read, "You can't test what sort of teacher someone will be, because testing what
someone knows isn't the same as what someone is able to share" (p. 140).
Reading aloud was Esme's forte. That is why, I presume, that Jim Trelease (1995)
wrote the Afterword in her book. Trelease is the name that literacy teachers immediately
associate with reading aloud. But Esme created ambience with a Victorian desk lamp,
and read poignant books with passion. After thirty-five years in this business, we see this
critical aspect of literacy learning lacking in too many classrooms.
Esme correlated her language arts to the holidays. She knew, for example, that all
kids know about Halloween. So they read books such as The Bat-Poet (Jarrell, 1964),
The Devil and Mother Crump (Carey, 1987), and Raw Head, Bloody Bones: African
American Tales of the Supernatural (Lyons, 1995). They had a scary story contest, and
performed a dramatization of Old Devil Wind (Martin, 1970). Esme even dressed up like
a witch.
Esme had a large classroom library where children read authentic texts of
children's literature. Esme bought these with her own money. She knew that children
learn to read by reading real literature for real reasons. She knew how critical emotions,
attitudes, and schema theory are. The students' histories mattered. She used art as a
corollary with literature. She had her students' artwork displayed featuring exciting
scenes from books the school's visiting author had written. All this was done with
passion. I agree with Mooney and Cole (2000) that passion "is the fast track to the
Buddha. Our passion for things, for life, for art, for anything and everything is what
keeps us alive. To live life passionately is our ultimate goal.”
Esme recognized the need for engaged learning. Money and Cole (2000) assert
that this is the environment to beat all learning environments. It works best because:
Project-based learning or experiential learning is rooted in the fact
that the act of doing in a focused manner uses numerous multimodal ways
of learning. The power of doing as a learning experience is not just skill
oriented but also an effective way to learn content, modes of thought, and
models of communication (p. 259).
Esme and her students were always doing. They did writing, reading, listening,
speaking, and they did it daily. They had formal debates. They put on shadow-puppet
shows. When reading and learning about medieval history, they built a castle and put it in
a fairy tale book display. They made video commercials to promote their favorite books.
What a fantastic way to teach children to be avid readers! They did a character
masquerade party. They made a book of fables. The children had international pen pals.
They illustrated books of poetry. They read and then wrote treasure maps. I want my
grandson in this classroom! This is engaged literacy learning.
Esme's Directed Reading Activity had the kids arranged in groups. She bought
eight copies of really beautiful children's books (with her own money). Each child had a
job in the group. The Discussion Director made up questions about the book. A wealth of
literature has been written about the value of having children ask questions about the
text (Manzo & Manzo, 1995). The Literary Luminary read aloud notable parts, thus the
proper mix of cognitive and affective tasks. The Language Lover defined the hardest
words in the section, building a repertoire of language for other listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. The Practical Predictor promoted inferencing by modeling how to
predict what would happen next. The Process Checker summed it all up, kept track of
participation, and decided how many pages they should read outside of class. They all
documented everything by writing, writing, and writing for real reasons.
Conclusion
Most of us as literacy educators would agree, I think, that at least three major goals
are necessary in a comprehensive language arts curriculum. First, we know that all
children will benefit from building listening language. In a study involving thousands of
students, listening language at Esme's fifth grade level predicted high school achievement
better than any other measure of aptitude or achievement (Atkin, Bray, Davidson,
Herzberger, Humphreys, & Selzer, 1977). Secondly, most of us agree that instructional
reading and writing strategies for all types of reading and writing can be helpful. And
thirdly, we all strive to have our students to become avid readers and writers. I have spent
my career trying to ascertain which one of these three goals could serve as a major conduit
for the other two. For example, will teaching reading strategies also automatically make
avid readers? Will focusing on listening language, by reading aloud, sharing tapes of
books, etc., inevitably make avid readers? I still don't have an answer, but I'm inclined to
go for the third goal, avid reading and writing. If we are worrying about balance, let's try
this goal as the major conduit. With avid reading and writing as our goal, we surely won't
continue to worship in the standardized temples where one size fits all, and serve to
advance the petty intellectual subterfuge (Mooney & Cole, 2000) that Esme alludes to
when she speaks of a governor of a certain western state declaring that students and
teachers will be held accountable. This accountability is ostensibly housed in the innards
of the state's student proficiency text, petty intellectual subterfuge indeed!
Would Esme's time machine in her classroom, an old refrigerator covered with
aluminum foil, a flashing police car light on top, and various knobs and keyboards gluegunned on, be worth more than preparation for a state proficiency test? The kids would
go in the time machine for thirty minutes at a time. No child saw the time machine just as
an old refrigerator full of books. How much is this worth to time travel through books?
Or is it really more important to point out the cognitive lepers on these state proficiency
tests? Mooney and Cole (2000) assert that the single most destructive force of education
is the devaluing of originality. They also ask us to examine a system of education that
cannot understand differences as anything other than defects. Esme said it best.
"Sometimes a little song is sweet to hear, even if an orchestra is more
accomplished" (p. 158).
References
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Atkin, R., Bray, R., Davidson, M., Herzberger, S., Humphreys, L., & Selzer, U.
(1977). Cross-lagged panel analysis of sixteen cognitive measures at four grade levels.
Journal for Research in Child Development, 48, 944-952.
Carey, V.S. (1987). The devil and mother crump. New York: Harper & Row.
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NC: Algonquin Books.
Coleman, S. (1990). Middle school remedial readers serve as cross-grade tutors.
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Fetterman, J. (1967). Stinking creek. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
Jarrell, R. (1964). The bat-poet, New York: Macmillan.
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Lyons, M.E. (1995). Raw head, bloody bones: African American tales of the
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